This week is the week of usability at the annual IRWD conference in Orlando, FL, and  we’ll be there carousing with other vendors. In addition to all the fun we’ll be having at our booth (see us in booth #300), our CEO, Shaun Ryan, is giving a talk alongside our customer U.S. Toy, about how to over-come multi-brand usability challenges through cross-linking of results in site search. The presentation, taking place at 4:00 p.m. EST on Tues., 2/14, highlights U.S. Toy’s success in this area (the company has a B2B site called Constructive Playthings and a B2C site called U.S. Toy). Shaun and Seth Freiden, U.S. Toy CEO, will demonstrate how the toy retailer captured more sales and improved the user-experience by showcasing products on sister sites in each site’s search results.

Be sure to stop by our booth at the show to see our learning-based search and navigation solutions in action, and learn first-hand how seriously we take the “full-service” aspect of our business. And while you’re there, you may just win a brand new iPad.

Hope to see you there!

Online retailers are going to great lengths to create content that informs, educates, inspires, and entertains their customers. They are producing fantastic articles about how to use their products, in-depth product buying guides and blogs about the experiences you can have with their products.  This content is a critical component to creating a superior customer experience, helping retailers attract and retain their customers.

But, this non-product content often gets little more than a link buried in their header or footer pointing to an index of the content. When you think about the journey a customer takes to discover your products and make a purchase decision, looking for a link to “articles” is probably not on the list. So I ask, what good is all this great content if your customers can’t find it?

The key to merchandising your content is to put yourself into your customers shoes.  With any piece of content it is important to try to think about all of the places where users might find this information helpful.  Think about which stage of the buying process this information belongs.  Also think about the actions visitors might take on your retail website to find the products they are looking for, and how to make their search experience a pleasant one.

Since site search is completely dependent on what your customers are looking for, it should provide access to all of your content that is relevant to your customer’s search keywords. Some SLI customers are already including related content insections within the main body of the search results and segmenting the different type of content in tabs within the search results pages.

In the example below from Artbeads.com, a search for “rhinestones” will reveal the top 20 products followed by the top eight learning center articles, eight community results and the top videos.

In another example from Doctors Foster and Smith, a search for “dog grooming” reveals 17 related articles that are accessible by customers who click on the articles tab.

Another great way to merchandise content within your site search is through the use of merchandising banners.  Since the banners can include both HTML and images, the possibilities or presenting your content are endless.  And, using the Merchandising Console, you can target these banners to very specific keywords for an engaging and personalized experience.

As you consider how to use search to merchandise your content, keep in mind that the way you display your content is completely customizable.  In this example from 24 Hour Fitness, a search for “classes” reveals 82 related videos that the user can display as a grid or list.

These examples illustrate just some of the ways you can merchandise your content on your store’s website.  If you have examples you would like to share, please do so by adding a comment to this post.

The web was buzzing last week with news of the Facebook IPO. Much of the news seemed to focus around Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth and the new crop of millionaires that will be made out of Facebook employees.  Silicon Valley exotic car dealers and real estate agents have probably been lined up outside Facebook HQ handing out business cards. With Facebook’s estimated valuation now a staggering $75 to $100 billion you may be wondering how on earth a company with revenues of $3.7 billion could be with that much.  I certainly am.

When you look at the stats surrounding Facebook, you realize that their potential to grow revenue is equally as staggering.  For instance, Facebook now has 845 million active users which represents a 45 percent increase since 2010.  More than half of their users return to the site each day.  And these users have produced an average of 2.7 billion “likes” and comments each day in the last three months of 2011. Now, when you consider the wealth of information Facebook has about it’s users and how they enable advertisers to target based on this, you begin to see the potential for a much greater share of advertising dollars. I think it’s only a matter of time before brand advertisers and businesses discover this and start fighting over the ad inventory as they now do on Google.

But what about retailers?  How can they cash in on Facebook’s success?  To start with, retailers need to have a presence on Facebook by building a page. I know this is obvious and hard to imagine that any retailer has not yet claimed their brand on Facebook but I still come across retailers who have not.  Having a page on Facebook enables their massive audience to “Like” your brand and start sharing what they think of you with their friends.

The ability to post comments about your store on Facebook has become a powerful tool for retailers to generate content from their customers. For example, asking a question on your Facebook wall to find out what your fans like most about a particular product is a great way to generate positive feedback and endorsement for that product.  Then, what makes this even more powerful is when you have your site search technology crawl these Facebook posts and make them available in your site search results. Retailers can now instantly reach out to their most engaged brand advocates and ask them all sorts of questions.  Questions like how they are using products, what advice they have for others for selecting the best product for a particular solution, what tips they have for using your products, and on and on.  All of this fantastic content can them be made available to new visitors through site search.

To encourage more sharing, retailers have begun placing Facebook like buttons on the product pages. This practice has exploded in the past year to the point where it feels hard to find retailers who don’t include a Like button.  Generating likes for your products shows an even deeper engagement from your customers and is a much more powerful way to drive sales.  The challenge is to actually get your customers to click the like button.  It seems consumer adoption of this has been relatively low.

One thing retailers like FTD.com have done to grow their product like activity is incorporate the Like button directly into their site search results.  This gives it much more visibility and from a usability perspective is much easier for people to click like as they browse products in search results.  There’s even a added usability benefit as retailers have incorporated the ability to sort search results by the number of likes.  I expect that the desire to sort by likes might actually become more popular than sorting by product star ratings. And, this added functionality will encourage that many more consumers to cast their vote for a product by clicking the like button.

FTD.com Search Includes Facebook Likes

The final tip I would have for cashing in on Facebook’s popularity is to enable those who visit your page on Facebook to initiate a search of your product catalog easily right from within your page.  This can be done by adding a tab on your page that includes a search box and incorporating the search functionality into your other custom tabs such as your Facebook default page.  Here’s an example from Chaparral Motorsports.

Chaparral Motorsports Enables Search on Facebook

With all of the retargeting options available to online retailers now, the creation of banner ads has become a regular task for creative teams. Coming up with fresh creative can be a challenge but knowing that our audience visited our site can make it a little easier. Better yet, if we know that they visited a specific category of product and we are able to target just those visitors, we have an even better chance of creating something that will attract their attention. The more we know about our audience, the better able we are to design an advertisement for them.

This retargeting technology is amazing but what if we could know exactly what someone was looking for at the moment in time that we were able to deliver them a banner ad. Imagine how we could surprise or delight them with a creative that speaks to what they are thinking at that moment. A banner that can read your mind.

Believe it or not, this mind-reading banner delivery technology actually exists. And, it’s available through the SLI Systems Merchandising Console. Now, you might be thinking oh yes, we already use that. You may for instance be using it to deliver a branded header banner for your specific branded search terms. And that is a fantastic use. But, what else could you do? What ways might you surprise and delight your customers with a graphical message that really speaks to what they are looking for?

I challenge you to put on your guerrilla marketing hat and create a banner campaign that’s unique, engaging and thought-provoking. For fun, I grabbed my guerrilla marketing cap and came up with these ideas in about 30 minutes. While these may not be the most thought-provoking, imagine what your creative team could to with more time.

For this exercise I thought about the creative from the perspective of a person searching for “rubber ducks” on the Century Novelty website. All of these ideas could be interchangeable with other products. Think of each idea as if you were going to create 50 or more individually targeted banners based on high volume search terms. The key here is to think like a guerrilla and create a campaign that is at a large enough scale to impact a significant number of your searches. This way, you’ll have a better chance of generating some buzz and a much better idea on how well it influences sales.

Duck Love – Feature a photo of a staff member of your company holding their favorite type of rubber duck and include a quote about what they love about this duck. Be sure to include the person’s name and position at your company. This will send the message about how passionate your entire company is about the products you sell and coincidentally the products your customer happens to be searching for.

Duck Deals – Surprise your customers with a “Surprise Search Coupon” for extra savings on rubber ducks. of some larger than usual percentage off rubber ducks. For added customization make the coupon code the exact term you are targeting.

Grade A Ducks – When your value proposition is based on having the highest quality products, create a series of ads that feature these products with a message like “Highest Quality Rubber Ducks Money Can Buy.”

Duck Duck Goose – Identify the most complimentary product to a rubber duck and feature it as a cross-sell item. A message like, “Shopping for a Rubber Duck? Well, don’t forget the Goose to go with it” could help drive additional sales and increase your site’s AOV.

Duck Calls – Give your customer service team a compliment and create an ad that promotes how knowledgeable your call center staff is about rubber ducks. Include your phone number and encourage your customers to talk with a rubber duck expert now. This will give your shoppers confidence that they have found product experts for exactly why they are looking for.

Duck TV – Create a short product video about your best selling, top rated, most liked, etc. rubber duck and promote that video in the banner. The video would give you an opportunity to show your rubber duck expertise and provide a more personal experience.

5-Star Ducks – Find your top rated rubber ducks and feature a compelling quote from an actual rubber duck review. Include an image of the rubber duck reviewed along with the 5-star rating.

Sea of Ducks - If you stock a wide variety of rubber ducks as Century Novelty certainly does, trumpet your great selection in the banner with a specific message of exactly how many varieties of rubber ducks you have to choose from.

Disappearing Ducks – Create urgency to buy with a banner that features a rubber duck that is in short supply or in high demand and stress how a very limited quantity of these special rubber ducks are left.

I hope that this inspires you to get your own guerrilla marketing brainstorm session going and launch an even more engaging keyword-targeted banner campaign with the SLI Merchandising Console.  When you do, be sure to share your ideas and success with others here by posting a comment below.

Retailers are collecting an amazing amount of priceless content from their customers comments on social networking sites like Facebook.  Unfortunately, much of this great content only reaches a limited audience because of how social media works.  For the most part, people only see what others are talking about right now.  It is a fast flowing stream that is nearly impossible to keep up with.  Without some way to pause the flow of content and capture it for later use, the value that this content can provide your business is dramatically reduced.

Although this situation sounds bleak, SLI Systems is providing a solution for many retailers that extends the life of their Facebook and social media content by allowing it to be discovered through their site’s search results.  I think the best way to illustrate the benefits of this is to provide some use case examples.

Let’s start with an example from 24 Hour Fitness.  If you are looking for a fun way to shed a few extra holiday pounds you might be searching for “exercise class ideas.”  As a 24 Hour Fitness member, or someone who just happens to come across their site, if you searched for that phrase you would find a wide assortment of results including pages, videos, products, social networks, and their blog and forum.  With a social networks tab showing 78 results that would be a good place to start for find unbiased advice.

The top result is from a Facebook post that asks, “What Group Exercise class best compliments your personal training routine and why?” Clicking this takes you a 24 Hour Fitness Facebook page showing the 50 most recent comments out of a total of 169 that they received.  The comments provide an incredible list of recommendations and endorsements from existing customers about all types of exercise classes such as Body Pump, Turbo Kick, Yoga and Zumba.  What’s great about this is that all of this content was created after 24 Hour Fitness posted the question back on November 18th of 2011 and now it’s all easily accessible everyday to customers searching their site for this information.

In another example, let’s say you just saw a TV commercial for the new Smart Touch gloves from Totes Isotoner and you want to find out what their people are saying about these gloves.  A good place to start would be the Totes Isotoner site with a search for “Smart Touch Gloves.”  This search would present you with a Social Media tab that had six results. 

Under the Social Media tab, you would learn about the gloves being featured on the Today Show and discover this great product endorsement posted as a comment on their Facebook wall back on January 10th.

Finally, if you are an aspiring fashion jewelry designer, one of your biggest challenges is coming up with a color scheme for your next jewelry design.  At Artbeads.com, if you searched for “color scheme” you would find five results under their community tab.

The top result from Facebook calls your attention to a free online tool called the Color Scheme Designer. Click the link and you’ll see a screen shot of the designer posted on January 2nd. You’ll also be able to read the many comments from other jewelry designers expressing their challenges about picking colors. Seeing this sort of content from people just like you will help you feel more a part of the community and give you a good reason to “Like” Artbeads.com on Facebook.

With the ability to include content from your Facebook wall and other social media sites in site search results, retailers can get much more mileage from their social media content. And, more importantly, they will be better able to harness the power of their customers for creating content. One way to do this is to look through your sites search phrases for questions customers are asking. Then, turn these questions into Facebook posts and let your community provide the answers. This strategy would be especially useful if your site was lacking content in these areas.

What other ideas do you have for Facebook posts that would engage your customers and inspire them to create quality content for your store? Post your ideas in the comments below.

Video has been proven to be a powerful driver of customer engagement and sales for online retailers. It is so important that retailers have gone beyond simple product videos and are now producing a wider variety of non-product video content.  They are also going to great lengths to make sure their customers can easily find these videos on their retail sites.  Many SLI customers have improved their search capabilities to include non-product content, and are now including graphic flags on products in search results for those that include video. And some are creating entire sections dedicated to video on their search results pages.

With all of this demand for video, the challenge many retailers now face is coming up with ideas for new videos and then finding someone to step in front of the camera.  If this is something you struggle with, the help you need may lie with your manufacturers and suppliers. Here are a variety of ideas for how you can tap into this resource to expand your store’s video library.

Manufacturer’s Videos
One of the easiest and fastest ways to add product videos to your site is to get them from the manufacturer. The quality of these videos is typically very high as manufacturers can justify big budgets for producing them. These videos can often be found with a simple search on YouTube or on the manufacturers web site.  When the video is on YouTube you can simply grab the code to embed it on your related product pages.

Motorcycle Superstore has made good use of this manufacturer’s video of the GoPro HD Hero2 camera by including it on their product page. The video is beautifully shot and features amazing action from those using the camera while they jump from airplanes, pull off extreme freestyle skiing tricks, dive with sharks, and free fall along cliffs in a wingsuit. And with over 8 million views, this is the sort of video that will not only engage your customers but also attract them to your site.

Manufacturer’s Rep Videos
The next time a manufacturer’s rep stops by to show off their new products, get out your video camera.  Since they have a deep knowledge of the products and are well practiced at presenting them, the manufacturer’s rep is one of the best people to put behind the camera.  This is also a good opportunity for someone in your business to jump in and ask questions.  The dialog between you and the rep makes for a more engaging video and shows your customers how well connected you are with those who produce the products you sell.

Here’s an example from Cruiser Customizing where the supplier and retailer work together to provide a nice overview of the types of motorcycle tool kits they sell.

How-To Videos
How to videos are a great way to create demand for your products.  When you teach someone how to do something new, you can expand the range of products they might buy and give them the confidence that they will be successful using those products.  An example from Northwest River Supplies (NRS), a manufacturer of paddling equipment, shows kayaking enthusiasts how to dress for fall touring.  The video showcases a variety of products that one would need, educates about product features and benefits, gives tips for how to use and also provides safety tips.  Since the presenter is an NRS employee who is an avid kayaker he is able to include some personal endorsement of the products.

Trade Show Videos
When you make that trek to your next industry trade show be sure to bring a video camera along.  You’ll find a large number of manufacturers eager to show off their products and answer your questions.  In just a few hours you’ll be able to capture enough video to keep your content pipeline full for months.  Video of the latest products and innovations makes for great Facebook posts and Tweets. These videos are also a great source of material to build a blog post around.

In this example a writer from Rockler Woodworking’s magazine Woodworker’s Journal pays a visit to the JET Powermatic booth at the AWFS show to learn about new changes to their products.

Instructional Videos
For more complex products manufacturers will often create instructional videos and may even include an instructional DVD with their product. In this example, Footwear Etc. has taken an  instructional DVD video included with their MBT Shoes and placed it on YouTube with a slight modification to include their brand name and contact info.  Footwear Etc. then links to the video from all of their MBT Shoes product pages.  Note, if you go this route be sure to get approval from the manufacturer before modifying their video.

As you can see from these examples, your manufactures and suppliers can have a big impact on your ability to deliver a steady flow of engaging video content.  As you put these ideas to use and publish exciting new video, don’t forget your responsibility for making sure your videos are easy to find.   Be sure to take advantage of the tools that your search solution provides to promote your videos in your site search results.

If you have other ideas for how manufacturers and suppliers can help retailers create video content and make it easier to find, please post them in the comments below.

As I discussed in my last post, “2012: The Year of the Tablet”, what’s hot in online retail this year seems to be trends that began bubbling up over the past several months.

We already discussed ways to address the social and table crazes. Other popular trends this year include personalization and video. Here are some tips for how to showcase these in search:

Make it Personal

When your site looks like it remembers people – their brand preferences, purchasing history, location – it goes a long way towards creating a personalized experience. For example, a “Recent Searches” box shows people the keywords they used previously, in case they want to search for something similar again. You can see this on FTD.com’s website, where the “Recent Searches” box shows “chrysanthemums” and “yellow roses” as previous searches. You can also localize results based on a visitor’s zip code, like Tractor Supply does, and deliver product availability and pricing information based on location. Multichannel retailers can also include information about the closest store for in-store pick-up.

Use video to bring products to life

The benefit of having product videos on your site goes beyond increasing engagement and conversions, they can also boost your SEO rankings. Extend the value of your videos by including them in site search results – put video icons next to items with related video content, as you can see on the Etrailer.com website. Also, you can rank the items with video higher on the search results page, and you can also display banners highlighting video content when visitors search using specific keywords.

While you’re coming up with creative ways to incorporate these trends into your marketing strategies, don’t forget to include search and navigation in your plans, given these pages are often the highest converting on your site.

How about sharing your thoughts on what 2012 will bring?

I’ll start – While 2011 could be called the year eRetailers got interested in mobile and social media, 2012 will likely be the year of the tablet, and … more social media.

As retailers begin to understand how people search, shop, and consume content on mobile devices, the soaring popularity of the iPad (one of the must-have items on people’s holiday wish lists this year), presents new challenges for retailers, as well as for those of us who provide products and services to them, in delivering a compelling shopping experience on the new “fourth screen.”

For tablets like the iPad and Kindle Fire, the requirements for creating user-friendly search and navigation experiences are different than those for the mobile screen. We have more screen real estate to work with when it comes to tablets, which means a better display of product images and an easier-to-use touchscreen. On the other hand, “t-commerce” or “couch-commerce” will require a different experience than what is displayed on a personal computer or mobile screen. Site owners (and companies like ours) need to brainstorm ways to take advantage of the benefits of tablets (like brilliant displays of photos and videos), while keeping navigation streamlined.

For instance, tapping the screen is the standard method of navigation for tablets. However, small text menus – for instance, which you might find in lists of refinements – are hard to tap on without hitting another menu item by mistake. The same goes for buttons that are too close together, or pagination numbers: easy to click on with a mouse, tough to click on with a finger. In addition, as GetElastic reports, tablets are making it possible for website visitors to interact with content in new ways: people can “touch” content, swiping and zooming to choose how they view text and images. This tactile interaction may cause us to discover new ways to present information, new ways to display navigation, and new possibilities for innovative merchandising and SEO.

Users spend lots of time on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and now Pinterest. We can expect that the merging of e-commerce and social media will gain even more prominence in the months ahead. As we’ve discussed before in this blog, site owners have realized that if people are spending more and more time with their friends on social networks, the website search and shopping experience needs to come to the social setting – instead of trying to lure people away from their social networks.

Now, your turn. What are your predictions for 2012?

The use of smartphones and tablets for shopping this holiday was featured among the NRF’s list of the Top 10 trends for 2011. They predicted that half of Americans with smartphones and 70 percent of tablet owners would be using their devices to assist with their shopping.

Now that the majority of holiday shopping has been completed more reports are surfacing about actual usage.  According to IBM’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday Reports, sales from mobile devices were basically three times higher this year than last.  This data, which comes directly from the web analytics of top retailers, shows mobile devices driving from 10 to 14 percent of all web traffic and from 6.6 to 9.8 percent of all sales.

Mobile commerce has clearly arrived. The question retailers now need to be asking is how well are they meeting the needs of this new mobile consumer and what can they do to improve in 2012?

According to Tealeaf’s 2011 Mobile Shopping Experience Report, retailers have plenty of room to improve.  Their analysis of social conversations around mobile shopping found that 41 percent of the chatter voiced frustrations.  These frustrations were most often related to an inability to complete the purchase and problems searching for products.  A negative mobile experience could create even bigger problems for retailers as a Harris Interactive study points out with the finding that 63% of consumers who experience a problem conducting a mobile transaction say they would be less likely to buy from that company via other purchase channels. Ouch!

As you take a closer look at your mobile commerce strategy and initiatives one of the first steps I recommend is to separate smartphones from tablets.  Based on the data around usage and responses to surveys these devices are entirely two different beasts.  Some have even asked the question if tablets should even be considered mobile commerce. Others are coining new names for their use such as Tablet Commerce or T-Commerce.

Smartphones are being used to help shoppers find store locations and check hours.  And once these shoppers get to the store they put their smartphones to work to research products, read reviews, compare prices and fetch coupons.  Tablets on the other hand are primarily used for shopping at home on the couch or in bed.  In addition, tablet shoppers are about twice as likely to complete a purchase than those with smartphone based on the findings in the survey of online shoppers conducted by Equation Research for rich media merchandising company Zmags which produced a nice infographic summary of the results.

How people feel when using these devices also appears to be quite different.  The Zmags survey found that tablet owners felt happy and more excited to shop than those without tablets.  This was a stark contrast to tabletless smartphone and laptop owners who felt impatient, stressed or overwhelmed about shopping.  Further evidence of this impatience is illustrated in this infographic about disappointment of mobile customers created from another Equation Research survey.  A key finding was that 74 percent of mobile users would abandon a site if it didn’t load in five seconds or less.

With this in mind, here are some questions to think about:

1. How will you adjust you mobile commerce strategy to address the needs of these two types of customers?

2. How will this influence the designs of your mobile experiences on smartphones and tablets?

3. What unique content will you create and provide on these different devices?

Let us know your thoughts about these questions and any other comments or questions you have about the split personality of mobile commerce.

I am excited to introduce Steve Groenier as a new guest blogger at SLI Systems. Steve has a long history in e-commerce and online marketing, serving the past three years as VP of Marketing and eCommerce for IR500-ranked Artbeads.com.  He will be writing about the latest news and innovations in online marketing while supplying his perspective as an online retailer focused on driving growth.  This includes diving into the details and analyzing the numbers. His aim is to filter out the hype and identify the real opportunities for retailers to produce measurable and meaningful results.

Steve is passionate about finding innovative ways to drive growth for online retailers and has a track record for producing results.  His early adoption of new advertising channels such as Amazon Product Ads and Google Remarketing have been featured in industry publications and Google case studies.  At Artbeads.com Steve launched numerous initiatives to improve the customer experience, increase conversion rates and build a customer community.  SLI Systems Learning Search, Merchandising and Site Champion where among these initiatives.

In his own words, Steve says, “I believe online retailers must deliver quality content, engaging and personalized experiences, and community interaction in order to attract customers and build lifetime loyalty.”  He has shared his views with retailers while speaking at the 2011 Online Retailer Conference in Sydney, Australia and recently in an SLI Systems webinar titled, “How to Build Better Brand Loyalty By Adding Social Content To Your Site Search.”

While Steve would say that the creative work in online marketing is his first love he would be quick to point out, “it’s the science of online marketing that I find the most interesting and potentially game changing.”  Steve believes in tracking everything, rigorous testing and making data-driven decisions.  As such, with every blog post, you can expect Steve will have something to say about the numbers.

We look forward to having Steve blog for SLI Systems.